It's here! Browse the 2024 Penguin Christmas gift guide
There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbour's Baby: Scary Fairy Tales

There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbour's Baby: Scary Fairy Tales

Summary

A woman finds herself filling a pit in the forest in the middle of the night; a family lock each other in their bedrooms to battle a strange plague; a wizard punishes two beautiful ballerinas by turning them into one hugely fat circus performer; a colonel is warned not to lift the veil from his dead wife's face; and a distraught father brings his daughter back to life by eating human hearts in his dreams.

In these blackly comic tales of revenge, disturbing deaths and haunting melancholy, Ludmilla Petrushevskaya blends miracles and madness in the darkest of modern fairy tales.

Reviews

  • 'Gave me nightmares ... These stories work the boundary states of consciousness like a tongue works an aching tooth'
    Elle

About the author

Ludmilla Petrushevskaya

Learn More

Sign up to the Penguin Newsletter

For the latest books, recommendations, author interviews and more